In an early Goosebumps book by RL Stine, the protagonist discusses how unpopular he is and speculates as to why he's so unpopular. Is it because of his looks? He says that he looked at himself in the mirror. Described his basic appearance. Says he's not exactly handsome, but not ugly either.

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion.
I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Cheers for the question and the answers - I'm running into the same problem myself. Writing in the first person makes it hard to get across what the narrator looks like without sounding stilted, contrived or vain. However, detailed descriptions of what everyone else looks like and having a narrator who's in the thick of the action seeming like some sort of disembodied voice is also really weird.

An interesting way I saw this dealt with was in the Eisenhorn books by Dan Abnett. The first person narrator was established as telling his story for inclusion in a library of case-files. In the first chapter he said something along the lines of "My looks? I have dark hair and am cleanshaven. I don't see why it matters anyway."

This depends entirely on the personality of the POV character and the nature of the story.

Describing one's appearance could be done because the main character is self-aware nearly to the point of breaking the fourth wall example 1

"SITREP. I am seventeen years old, five feet eight, hundred thirty pounds, Asian. Messy hair flops over eyes in a way that isn't as endearing as you'd think. Two siblings, mediocre grades, wear contacts, play the guitar. You can recognise me by the purple fleece I always wear, but in this case the dangling off the ninetieth story balcony will probably be more noticeable."

— not always possible to pull off — or, in more typical cases, worked into the story in small chunks example 2

"You should get this scarf," said mom, handing me a shapeless mass of what I could only describe as blue. "Matches your eyes." "My eyes are green, Mom," I said with a sigh. "... I knew that," lied mom, tossing the blue aside and picking up a green. [...] "If you stopped whining about yourself for a day or two you'd have no problem getting a date to the Niyazov Day Ball," expostulated Shirley. "So long as you get a haircut so it doesn't look like a large rodent has died on your head, shave off that ridiculous moustache, lose ten or fifteen pounds... maybe just work out more in general...." "Remember that thing I told you about finishing arguments a sentence early?" I asked.

— some other examples of how to do this are supplied by AHR, but the possibilities are really endless. Working exposition seamlessly into the story is typically the best way to do stuff in general.

I have devised a most marvelous signature, which this signature line is too narrow to contain.

I guess it also depends how medium aware you're making the character. My story is written from the point of view of a person writing something down for posterity so he's aware of the medium and can easily break the fourth wall if required - including directly addressing the reader if need be.

Perhaps you can find ways to have the other characters note upon his appearance in conversation, such as "Hey, you're tall and lanky, help me get that jar from the top shelf" or "Stop jumping, you'll cause an earthquake, fatty" or "Hey, are you Tom Cruise?" It's not entirely necessary that you get a full paragraph description, is it? As long as you can sprinkle in some important traits here and there, that should be plenty, right?

Okay, so I have him describing how he towers over his wife because he's 6'3". But his most striking feature is his eyes, and I don't know how to get him describing those, because people don't usually think things along the lines of "I have steely grey eyes that give my gaze a peircing, commanding quality, but hints of earthy tones about the iris give warmth to them as well."

"All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice." — Joseph De Maistre.

I'm pretty sure if someone's most striking feature is his eyes, someone is bound to mention it. I can't mention Cillian Murphy in a conversation without mentioning his blue eyes of awesome... and in normal conversation I will mention how someone looks if it's particularly interesting (though that might be because I draw and walk the earth going "Your interesting nose will show up on one of my characters!")

I have trouble adding descriptions of my viewpoint character too. So far I tend to depend on the other characters mentioning things they find odd or interesting about the way he looks. And the character is a bit sensitive about his height and tends to mention every time someone is taller than him.

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